(General checking in with each other & discussion initially, as this is first EOWG meeting following Sept 11 events)
CL: Diana Cohen at the Pentagon is OK.
JB: I had sent out an agenda thinking we would have new materials; last two or so I have lost track of time, no materials to discuss
JB: any outreach updates? We can talk generally about deliverables
JB: I'm hoping people haven't lost folks close to them
CL: our government has called an official day of mourning today, relatives in Arlington and NYC - they are all OK. I wish everyone the best.
Hank: express my deep sympathy we have had three minutes of silence at noon here.
JB: some countries in Europe lost many people, 26 different countries represented
HB: loss 10-50 times the Pearl Harbor loss, very sobering
WL: Gregory Rosmaita across the river from it
JB: several VICIG members were lost in the WTC, people with disabilities have a much more difficult time getting out
CV: I know how you feel - this is terrible, no words to describe it, what ever we can do to help you
Doyle: impact on F2F meetings
JB: some meetings in DC have not been cancelled, W3C meetings in progress, 3 WAI meetings in Seattle, WCAG meeting Mon-Tues - already there, on Tuesday they gathered and worked and talked quietly in the morning, resumed in the afternoon, Wed & Thurs ATAG was supposed to meet, ½ group was already there, the other ½ couldn't get there, decided to go ahead & meet, very good meetings, including visitors from Microsoft. One Microsoft presenter was missing in the disaster at that time. Was supposed to be a third UA meeting, no one could fly in, that was cancelled. GSA forum meeting this week, Insights forum also. Only one airport in Washington is open. Meetings in Berlin that I am supposed to be at are still on but the airports on my itinerary are closed.
Doyle: long term impact on travel
JB: discuss this?
William: video conferencing will increase (people will not want to travel), tried to attend Seattle meetings via IRC - totally hopeless, very rapidly move to video conferencing from our desks, stay focused on our goal, to have video conferencing technology accessible,
Doyle - I would like to second what William said, it's been a concern at Wells Fargo for the last 6 mos due to the economy, accessible issues have not been worked out. People with disabilities need to be included in this.
JB: let's continue on this thread for a few minutes, fuzzy line on the scope in terms of what E&O can do about this,
Go back to WL comments re: attempts to participate via IRC and telephone, what didn't work well in that situation, remote participation in F2F meetings, 2nd, talk about the specific accessibility issues that come up with video conferencing
JB: William, on first one - what in particular broke down?
WL: similar to problems we notice in distance learning, you are frequently confronted with a complet eunawareness with the fact that someone cannot see your presentation. We should be able to link to something on the Internet, a client on my desktop that would enable me to see the presentations being made by MS. The participants aren't able to participate - the problem of taking minutes and participating must be profound. Further, the translation requirements, not just sign language, white board translator for people who can't see it. Like Amaya as a test bed for video conferencing.
JB: White board - colored markers - they scribble on them, they draw diagrams, remote white boarding, software, each participant in the meeting would have the same whiteboard software, draw on each other's diagrams, 2 W3C WG's have experimented with remote white boarding. Somewhat problematic - remote white boarding drawing on a tablet, generating images that have no semantics associated with them. Can you use SVG and attach semantics? Research & Development question.
Harvey: speech-to-text as an approximation to close captioning, is a surrogate for those who professionally transcribe into close captioning real time. Adding to or augmenting it, the person s/b encourage to give an oral translation of what they adding,
AA: describe what I'm drawing on the white board for full participation, complication, not just for people with a disability, barrier at educational software, for people with physical disabilities, people who can't use a mouse
Doyle: business directions going towards collaboration for workgroups distributed nationally or internationally, if you have a disability and those barriers are there, implication in terms of people getting job or keeping jobs.
JB: one of the ways we've considered in doing research, charter maps out a series of teleconferences on research topics, occurs every other month, open invitation call for people who want to attend and discuss that topic, post research questions on a web site.
JB: Willingness to put together presentations for the seminar, test our assumptions on this topic. My proposal would be to push the topic out of this group and into R&D IG.
Carlos: Internet not used much in Europe for video conferencing, cost is really high, different quality and standards in EU.
JB: should we pursue this?
CL: this is a topic for a research project, it's a topic I've dealt with in Canadian government for a long time, making it more accessible is a key, spur to improve the technology
Hank: in terms of experience, it's good to know, accessibility, if it is suitable for handicapped people, for our selves, to know how to deal with it for further use.
JB: Jutta T. @ University of Toronto has done work on this.
Jean-Marie: I agree it is important to address.
JB: Harvey - any comments? Are there a few people from this call that would be interested in planning a one-hour presentation?
William - you've got me
Doyle: me as well.
Carlos: Yes
Andrew: I can participate.
Harvey: Yes
William: position papers?
JB: and recruiting speakers - take it off line
William: start the process thing within the W3C, clearly huge in infrastructure worldwide, time for a videoconferencing activity group.
JB: fortunately, the process for R&D IG discussion is in place and the 2nd is with regard to W3C taking this up as an activity, question has been asked recently, are not resources to be expanding right now. Several things in pipeline, difficult to add another activity right now.
Carlos: France, workshop, conference on human computer interaction, small workshop on accessibility, review group of researchers from universities, people were interested, invited them to participate in working groups in WAI.
WL: accessibility integrated into the forthcoming revive technology sector, process of replacing a great deal of travel with this kind of stuff.
JB: what kind of statement would you see E&O making?
WL: the experiences you have had showing up at places, universal design has not permeated very deep yet, press release?
Doyle: from my experience, people run into web conferencing accessibility a lot. From a business point of view this is going to be a very big deal. This group would contribute a lot with a policy statement.
JB: E&O normally doesn't make policy statements, in GSA forum, this could be raised as a statement from WAI. At the meeting this coming week, highest remote participation, most people won't be able to fly in. first call - E&O could put out a statement of importance, we could do the invitation, as a way of highlighting the issue, I would hope to be able to use the product of the first discussion as the kind of thing that has a better articulated summary of what the issues are, pointers to scenarios, etc.
JB: other ideas?
Doyle: good start, important thing on my agenda right now.
William: Judy, your remote participation at the GSA forum, first order example of what the problems are going to be.
JB: Carlos, the "?" event,
Carlos: focus on accessibility of the guidelines for designers, from academia, Univ. of Brussels, are developing their own set of guidelines in French. Tried to map their results to WCAG.
JB: get info from Sylvie
Carlos: group in UK, HUSAT, content guidelines for people with learning disabilities.
JB: Hank - I wanted to check in and see if you have any outreach, email problems,
Hank: email problem for Eric.
JB: outreach updates
Hank: We are now a member of the W3C, employment offices, standardized computerized configuration for every office, want to have one computer configuration that is accessible for everybody, researching standard configuration.
CL: Jutta working on a program in Canada (Industry Canada) - WEB4ALL, the model is for workstations in public areas (libraries, community access points) smart card reader, configuration of assistive technology. http://www.web4all.ca
Andrew: we are participating in some of the early trials here in Australia
JB: comment - very encouraged
Harvey: digital talking book project, end of September, publicly releasable description
Kathleen: teaching a class, need examples of a properly tagged PDF documents.
Andrew: impediments
JB: WCAG has techniques they are working on.
JB: upcoming European Commission presentation on web accessibility, Sylvie and I were filmed for this, preliminary web site we were asked to look at.
WL: report on WCAG, length of time to get our guidelines is about two years, developers from MS citing familiarity with WCAG.
JB: Are there any other outreach updates?
JB: we have a bunch of pending work, some of it is in my lap, doing finishing touches, benefits document, evaluation document, how people with disabilities use the web, look ahead a little bit, how to evaluate web accessibility is the stepping stone to gallery of accessible web sites. Also, curriculum for web contact accessibility guidelines - chuck would be revisiting in light of WCAG 2.0.
CL: waiting for information from you
JB: overview of WAI - we should do a revision and review, cleanup, policies relating to web accessibility, problem with links, Sysrec needs to be contacted. Kathleen I will send you the contact info.
WL: do members of the W3C have web site accessibility polices? Ask them for a copy or a link? "For our records?"
JB: getting started - making a web site accessible. General links on web accessibility.
JB: wanting to work on more materials oriented towards user
Kathleen: I will continue to collect policies
JB: progress and implementation of WCAG levels? We are continuing discussions on WCAG implementation, discussion of resumption of chairs meeting.
JB: at the point where we should wrap up this call.
is tentatively scheduled for September 21st, hope to announce by Monday, definitely scheduled for September 28th.
Adjourned at 10:24 am.
Last updated 20 September 2001 by Judy Brewer (jbrewer@w3.org)